Koba: thanks for reviewing! Yes, I deliberately wrote the Green Knight as being different from the normal legend — that's because I wanted to keep close to the movie canon and have magic at an absolute minimum, so rather than the Green Knight picking up his own severed head he just has a brother to challenge Gawain to a rematch.

The next day I was roused by Tristan standing over me and nudging my leg with the toe of his boot. Once he saw my eyes open he moved away and went about his morning business. I sat up and braided my hair; it was before dawn, and the rest of the village had only just started to stir into wakefulness.

Breakfast was a rudimentary affair of unsweetened porridge and yesterday's bread, which I ate while hurriedly scribbling down the previous night's events. Morholt watched me with naked suspicion as I did so, clearly unused to the sight of a woman wielding a quill. I was secretly pleased at unsettling the Irishman, though I pretended to ignore him.

Tristan wanted to disappear from the Carvetti village like a curl of mist on a sunny morning, but allowed me to linger long enough to thank the headman's wife for the hospitality she and her husband had shown us. It would have been impertinent or at least odd for a woman to approach and address a male host directly, but gratitude needed to be demonstrated. After that, we prepared the horses and set out once more along the Roman road.

Perhaps forty-five minutes of silence passed. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon, its rays causing the frost to glitter upon the ground. Our horses trod over it, their hooves slipping over the slick cobbles of the road. I was bundled in my cloak, scarf, hat, and mittens, and still felt cold. At least it wasn't snowing and the wind was still. Tristan looked back over his shoulder at us, then cantered away to scout the distance.

I urged my horse next to Morholt's. "Would you tell me of the Lady Isolde, Morholt?" I asked, watching Tristan's figure grow small with distance.

Morholt looked at me for a moment, considering his response, then answered: "she is beautiful, and clever for a woman. She can sing and play the harp."

He shrugged after that, as though there was nothing else about his cousin worth knowing. And indeed, there probably wasn't—from his perspective. A woman of this era needed only two things to be a queen: royal blood in her veins and the ability to bear male children for her husband. She wouldn't need an education or any practical skills, since she would have servants or slaves to attend to her needs and would not be consulted on matters of state.

"Why was the match arranged?" I asked.

"You ask too many questions," Morholt grumbled, and would have spurred his horse ahead of mine if Cynric's voice hadn't checked him.

"I would like to know as well," the Saxon said, though I couldn't see why. Was he asking for my benefit?

Morholt huffed, clearly annoyed by the conversation. "Our tribe, the Laigin, have long raided Cornwall for treasure and slaves. When Mark of Cornwall sent emissaries begging for peace, we sent the messengers back where they came from—in pieces!" There was a cruel delight in Morholt's smile, and Cynric nodded his understanding and approval. I, remembering Badon Hill and the pieces of bodies I had seen with my own eyes, just felt sick. Morholt continued: "when the Lady Isolde came of age, she had many suitors from the surrounding tribes, so her father, my lord Aengus mac Lorc, set the bride-price high. Mark of Cornwall sent more emissaries… but this time they arrived bearing an offer of marriage, for he alone could pay the bride-price. Now, with Lady Isolde married to Mark, my lord Aengus cannot go raiding into Cornwall—but the treasure Mark offered for my cousin's hand is so vast that a marriage-alliance would make up the lost plunder."

As I'd suspected, Isolde had had no say in selecting her partner. I pitied her—but at the same time, I could see no way to save her. This marriage had to take place. Sure, it was unfair to Isolde, but it would stop the Laigin raiding the Dumnonii and make the Dumnonii allies of Arthur.

"How old is Mark?" I asked.

"Fifty-some years," Morholt answered. "I and the druid Maelodor traveled to Cornwall to broker the match and receive the first half of the bride price; I saw the king with my own eyes."

"And he is honorable? He treated you well?" I asked, when really I wanted to ask if he would treat Isolde well.

"He is old and tired, and wants to buy peace with his neighbors rather than keep his spears sharp," Morholt said, and spat onto the road to show his opinion of such policies. "But we were guests in his hall and suffered no injury or dishonor," he grudgingly amended.

Well, that could mean… anything. I couldn't envision a happy future for Isolde, though neither was her soon-to-be misery set in stone. A sudden sour taste flooded my mouth as a revelation hit me: I called myself a feminist and wanted equality for women, but here I was partaking in a mission to aid in a woman's forced marriage and oppression. Some beacon of liberty I was!

Tristan returned to check on his three fellow travelers, and Morholt wanted to know if the way ahead was clear. The Knight gave him a curt nod of affirmation but didn't speak, and his hawk landed on his arm and surveyed us all with wild golden eyes. For a time Tristan rode with us, and I found myself watching him.

Tristan and Isolde… it was certainly a famous romance. I could think of three different poets who had written their versions of it, as well as a movie from my own time. And yet, looking at Tristan, I couldn't envision the laconic scout as a romantic figure. He was too grim, too unfeeling, too silent to be anything but a terrifying warrior. What kind of woman would Isolde have to be to capture the heart of such a man—and would Tristan be worth the effort of such a capture?

But Morholt had mentioned that Isolde was beautiful; maybe it would just be lust that would cause Tristan to deviate from the mission. Or maybe the stories were true and a love potion was somehow involved. Or maybe nothing would happen, and the poets were liars as Guinevere believed, and I was worrying myself to an early grave for nothing.

As the morning progressed, clouds massed in the north. By early afternoon the entire sky was as gray as a sword-blade and the air had a strangely metallic smell.

"Snow," Cynric pronounced, and indeed, as the light began to fail so the first flakes began to fall.

We didn't find a village before dusk, and so were forced to camp in the open beside the road. Tristan radiated discomfort at our exposed position, but made no comment and vanished into the surrounding woods to do… something. Morholt tended the horses as I gathered deadwood under the trees.

"Don't, Claire," Cynric said, shaking his head at me as I emerged from the trees carrying an armful of sticks.

"What?" I asked.

"We cannot have a fire."

"But it's cold!"

"And the headman in the village said there are bandits about. We can't light a beacon for them to find us by."

I grimaced. "I should have thought of that," I said, and tossed the sticks on the ground.

We ate a frugal meal of oatcakes and dried meat, then bundled ourselves in as many layers as possible and hunkered down close to the horses. Tristan returned, and a watch was divided between the men. As a woman (or possibly just a non-warrior) I was excluded and allowed to sleep through the night, but that didn't mean much—it was a shallow, fitful sleep, worsened into a series of catnaps by the cold.

I was already awake when Tristan approached to rouse me in the gray pre-dawn light, and managed to saddle and bridle the chestnut mare unassisted. My fingers were numb, and that fact combined with my inexperience meant I took the longest to be ready, but I managed to finish without asking for help.

Which didn't stop Tristan from brusquely brushing me aside to check my work, since I was apparently a helpless child in his eyes and couldn't be trusted to do anything related to horses. If it had been Cynric or Morholt I might have snapped something, but I was still too wary of Tristan's silent menace to say anything rude to his face. He gave me a small nod to show everything was in order, and then we mounted up and kept riding.

It was a long, cold, silent day. We passed a village in the early afternoon, but found none as the dusk deepened into nightfall and so camped once more beside the road. I was tired and miserable, and found myself longing for Bedivere's room—the straw-stuffed mattress there might have been lumpy, crackly, and utterly inadequate compared to the comfort I'd experienced in the 21st-century, but at least it had been off of the ground and out of the wind. I missed Freki's silent devotion, too; the little mongrel had clearly enjoyed my company, rather than just tolerating me as Morholt and Tristan did. As for Cynric… sometimes I would look up and find the Saxon watching me, and our eyes would lock briefly, and then we'd both look away.

The days blurred together, and my hands were too cold for me to want to unstopper my inkwell and go through with the effort of writing. I wrote nothing on the third day. On the fourth day we crossed a river via a stone bridge of Roman construction. I asked Tristan what the river was called, and he said the Romans named it Itouna.

"That's just the Brittonic word for water," I pointed out, frowning.

Tristan, eloquent as ever, shrugged. I puzzled over the name for some time, then imagined some Roman geographer of earlier centuries pointing to a river and asking to know what it was called. Some confused Briton might have rolled their eyes—stupid Romans, of course that was water they were pointing at!

On the fifth day, we reached a town—not a village, but a real town. The Romans had called it Luguvalium, which was a Latinization of the Brittonic name Luguwalion. It was the seat of the Carvetti tribe's power and where their central authority was located, and was coincidentally watched by the looming presence of the largest fort along Hadrian's wall: Petriana, named after the much-lauded cavalry cohort that had been stationed there prior to the Roman withdrawal from Britain.

"Were they Sarmatians?" I asked Tristan.

Tristan shook his head.

We rode into town. It was clearly a Roman town, not a British one—the streets were paved and arranged in a distinct, orderly geometric pattern, and many buildings were made of stone in the Roman style. However, the people walking the streets were definitely Britons, some with painted skin and some without, all of them dressed in warm wool garments of British cut and decoration. We passed through a market square where a herd of nervously bellowing, hairy cows were being loudly auctioned, and then reached an inn.

The inn was much similar to Marius' villa: a two-story stone building arranged in a square-cornered U-shape around a central open place, which served as the yard where guests dismounted from their horses or carriages. Part of the lower story was a stable, but there was also a common room and kitchen. The upper story was sectioned off into rooms for guests.

"Are we going to sleep on real beds tonight?" I asked, and I couldn't keep the longing out of my voice. A groom took the chestnut mare to a stall and began brushing her down.

"With the gods' blessing," Morholt said, smiling. There hadn't been any incidents like the one in the Carvetti village, but I now kept my distance from the Irishman when possible and was careful to never be alone with him.

We walked into the common room. Tristan, our charismatic leader, hailed the innkeep with his usual friendliness, which made a guard at the door begin walking towards our party with deliberate casualness. Tristan requested dinner for four, which I had expected, and then a single room for the night, which I hadn't. I'd been hoping for my own room, and at this point was willing to sacrifice a few of my feminist ideals of equality to lean on my companions' sense of nobility towards the so-called fairer sex—but apparently this wasn't to be. Regardless, the price the innkeep named for these services made Tristan freeze. I think the scout would have just walked away at that point and said we would all sleep in the woods again, but that was the moment Morholt took over and started the haggling.

Annoyingly, he was good at it. He insulted the establishment by saying he had heard the food wasn't good and the bedding had lice, which made the innkeep bristle with indignation, and a few sentences later the price was lower. Morholt went on, doling out just enough praise to stop us from being thrown out on our behinds while insinuating that four meals and a single room really wasn't worth the price we were being offered—and weren't there other inns in Luguwalion where we could get a better deal? Eventually, Morholt wore the innkeep down to almost half of the initial offer, which he accepted. He and the innkeep clasped hands to seal the agreement, and then Morholt led the way to an empty table and we all sat down.

"Well done," I said. It had definitely been an impressive performance.

Morholt smirked, and his smirk grew in size as we were served cups of frothy ale and platters of roast mutton. The mutton was tough beneath the (admittedly excellent) garlicky sauce it was served with, but I finished my serving. The ale was stronger than I would have liked, and I was stifling yawns by the time our empty platters were taken away. Morholt left our table to flirt with the serving girls, with mixed results—some of them liked his looks, but others were wary of his accent because Luguwalion was near enough to the western coast for the locals to have strong feelings about Irish pirates. Tristan sat with his back to the wall and turned an unsettling stare on anyone whose gaze lingered too long on our party, and Cynric was keeping quiet.

"Is something wrong?" I eventually asked him. He hadn't spoken a single word since we entered the inn's common room.

Cynric looked around, then spoke in a low voice meant only for my ears: "how happy do you think all these Britons would be—" he gestured to the other patrons ranged around the common room with the hand not holding his cup, "—if they heard the language of their former masters spoken with the accent of a recent invader? I would rather hold my tongue than have the whole tavern up in arms."

I hadn't seen Cynric as the type to shy away from a fight. Was it because he was outnumbered here and didn't expect Morholt or Tristan to help him? I was curious enough to use only a modicum of caution in my phrasing: "Some men would call that cowardice."

Cynric grimaced into his cup. "Those men don't have a helpless woman traveling with them. With you and eventually Lady Isolde to look after, no honorable warrior would—" he broke off into a string of Saxon curses.

Across the common room, Morholt had bowed to a seemingly receptive serving girl and introduced himself fully, perhaps trying to impress her with his status. Someone from a neighboring table had heard him and decided to take offense. This person jumped up and proclaimed to the entire common room that warriors from the Laigin tribe of Ireland had raped and murdered his sister during a raid on a British coastal village. Others chimed in with other wrongs they had personally seen or heard of Irish pirates committing, and all of a sudden it was Morholt vs. a room full of angry, partway-drunk Britons. One person darted forward and grabbed Morholt's arm as his hand strayed towards the handle of his eating knife, and the Irishman twisted in his grip to throw the man over his hip and onto a table, which splintered into pieces. Then the brawl started in earnest.

I was frozen in my seat, gaping at the sudden violence. Cynric got to his feet, took my arm, and all but dragged me to the foot of the stairs.

"Go to our room, bar the door, and only let me or Tristan in," he instructed.

"But—"

"Go, Claire!" Cynric snarled, then followed Tristan's lead and waded into the brawl. I hesitated for one moment, and then one of the British men looked at me—he was a greasy, rough-looking sort who held a fighting knife in one hand, and as soon as I felt his eyes on me I fled up the stairs. I did as Cynric ordered and barred the door, then felt around through the dark until I found the single lamp in the windowless room. I lit it with some effort, and by its feeble, flickering light wrote down the events of this and the previous days. My hand shook at first, but the effort of writing calmed me and steadied my hand. The tumultuous noise from downstairs went quiet, and I found myself staring at the door.

What would happen if Cynric and Tristan were hurt? What would happen if they died? How was I supposed to take care of myself without their protection? During all my time in the fifth century, I had always been under someone's protection and guidance—how was I supposed to manage if that was taken away? My mind was running through disaster scenarios at breakneck speed, and I startled when a heavy knock on the door sounded.

But it was Tristan's voice. "Open the door," he said, and I did so. Tristan had blood on his knife and on his knuckles, but seemed unharmed. So did Cynric, who carried his naked sword in one hand and used his other arm to keep Morholt upright. The Irishman was leaning heavily on the Saxon, his steps slow and stumbling and his head hanging low.

"Is he—" I began.

"Concussion, probably," Tristan said. "Someone broke a chair over his head."

What I had learned in the aftermath of Badon Hill surged to the fore. "Did you check for a skull fracture?"

Tristan gave me a reproachful look—of course he had checked, he had been fighting on this island for fifteen years and more than knew what to look for when it came to head injuries. I grimaced and looked away in silent apology.

Morholt laid down on the room's single bed with a soft, involuntary moan of pain. Tristain wiped his knife clean on his pants, then laid down on the floor using his pack as a pillow and his cloak as a blanket; he was probably uninjured. Cynric sheathed his sword and rubbed a hand over his face.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, speaking softly for Tristan and Morholt's sake.

"Just bruised," the Saxon murmured. He sat down on the floor with the deliberate care of someone whose movements pained him. "Four people died in that fight."

My eyes went wide. This wasn't a battlefield; killing people in peacetime had consequences, and I wasn't familiar with the law codes of sub-Roman Britain. "What will happen?" I asked.

"We will find out tomorrow," Cynric said, and laid back on the floor. He and Tristan were on one side of the bed, giving me the relative privacy of the floorspace on the other side. I finished writing and extinguished the lamp, then curled up under my cloak. The floor was hard, but after more than half a week of winter camping I was mostly just pleased to be warm.

I drifted into a sleep that, though deep, was plagued by troubled dreams.

We weren't dragged out of our room during the night by whatever passed for law enforcement in Luguwalion, which was promising, but when Tristan went downstairs to the common room the next morning the innkeep presented him with a bill for the broken furniture. Also awaiting the scout was a trio of Carvetti guardsmen and a magisterial representative wearing a wolf-fur cloak.

The representative told Tristan that galanas was owed for the lives of the people killed in last night's brawl, and that we would not be allowed to leave Luguwalion until galanas was satisfied. Tristan went back upstairs, took the sleeping Morholt's gold armbands, then gave them over to the representative—and just like that, we were free to go. I was baffled. I had been bracing myself for a go-round with some type of medieval criminal punishment (the stocks, maybe, or torture at worst), but apparently homicide was seen more as a financial transgression than a moral one; compensation to the victims' families was certainly owed, but nothing more. That was galanas. It varied from person to person—women were valued less than men, but galanas for a chieftain's wife was more than triple that of a male serf, while a king's galanas was downright unpayable—and there was a similar term, sarhaed, that referred to the compensation owed for crimes less serious than murder/manslaughter such as rape or destruction of property.

"It is the same for us," Cynric said when I asked over breakfast. When he said "us" he meant Saxons. "Our word for it is weregild, but it's the same."

"But it's not fair," I found myself saying, my tone straying dangerously close to a whine. "It might as well be just buying the right to commit a crime if all that's owed is monetary compensation. And what of the difference between rich and poor? A noble could commit a murder and walk away for the price of a finger-ring, but a poor man might lose everything."

Cynric shrugged. "Then he shouldn't break the law."

I sighed. "The point is that there should be equitable punishments for crimes so that both rich and poor are equally deterred."

Tristan was watching us from the other side of the table. "You sound like Arthur," he said, which was… I couldn't tell if it was a compliment or not. And it was so rare for Tristan to join a discussion (with me, anyway) that Cynric and I both looked at him as though he'd grown a second head.

"What do you think, then?" I asked, after several moments of surprised silence had passed.

Tristan sat back. He looked down at his eating knife and turned it over in his hands. "Spiders don't make webs in such a way that they give themselves the chance of being trapped alongside the flies," he said, then looked up at us. "We benefited from that."

"Yes," I admitted. The 21st-century American justice system might be more equitable than that of 5th-century Britain, but if this situation had occurred under it we would all still be in jail cells awaiting our lawyers. Cynric took my concession as me giving up the argument, and stood up from the table to bring Morholt downstairs.

The Irishman was slow-witted and dazed from his concussion. We gave him some bread for breakfast, helped him mount his horse, then readied ourselves and set out. We no longer traveled parallel to the Wall, which continued westward for perhaps another day before ending at a fort called Maia that overlooked the shallowest section of Solway Firth—too shallow for the vessel Morholt claimed to be awaiting us. Instead, we angled south upon a different Roman road, plunging into a hilly countryside. There were more forts here, now deserted and sad-looking, but rather than defending against an invasion of wild northern Celts they had been meant as symbols of Roman power to curb any potential rebellions. The road avoided the heights of the mountainous area that would come to be called the Lake District in modern England, which disappointed me slightly—when planning my vacation with Jake I had wanted to tour the Lake District as well as Hadrian's Wall, but ultimately had been forced to choose between them—and instead veered westward towards the coast.

We traveled for six days along this southwest road. Morholt, after recovering his senses, was a bitch throughout; he did not complain of his head hurting thanks to his warrior's pride, but was deeply insulted by Tristan taking his armbands to pay the galanas without asking his permission. Thus, he acted even colder to Tristan and Cynric—and to me, by extension. He was full of nothing but snide comments and snippy retorts, and that coupled with his mistrustful, considering glances wore us all down and shortened our tempers. Tristan spent more and more time scouting, and I could practically hear Cynric grinding his teeth—but because of Morholt's role in brokering the marriage we couldn't just cut his throat in his sleep, abandon the body, and tell Isolde a tragic accident had befallen her cousin. Alas.

Tristan now seemed leery of the perils of civilization, and under his leadership we camped in the wilderness. I heard wolves howling in the surrounding hills, and on the single occasion Tristan deemed it safe enough to have a nighttime fire Cynric had to chaperone me into the woods to collect deadwood. We were perhaps a stone's throw from the camp, but it still felt awkward to be 'alone' with the Saxon; I felt like I should say something, but had no idea what, and so a long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between us as we both pretended not to watch each other.

Eventually, when my armful of sticks was nearing fullness, Cynric broke that silence: "Claire, there's something I must know."

"What is it?" I asked, my mind suddenly flickering through interpersonal disaster scenarios. If this turned out to be like the last time the Saxon and I had had a moment alone on midwinter's eve…

"Why were you chosen to accompany us on this mission?" he asked, which was an incredibly reasonable and normal question not at all related to all the… the whatever that was going on between us. A knot in my chest loosened.

"Guinevere wanted Isolde to have a female companion during the journey, so that she wouldn't be traveling alone with a group of men."

The Saxon nodded slowly. "So there is… nothing you have foreseen coming to pass?"

I hesitated, thinking of the famous romance we might all be about to witness. I must have hesitated too long, because Cynric narrowed his eyes. I didn't have the energy to think of a lie, and more than that I was tired of just worrying and worrying all alone. I wanted, perhaps even needed, a confidant, and Morholt and Tristan were out of the question—that left Cynric, who could if nothing else could provide a fresh set of eyes to the 'problem' of Tristan and Isolde.

"I will tell you," I found myself promising, "but another time; listening ears might be lurking nearby." I jerked my chin in the direction of the camp. Cynric nodded in acquiescence, and we returned to the site Tristan had picked for us to spend the night. I warmed my toes close to the fire we made, and fell asleep listening to the far-off howling of the wolves.

On the morning of the seventh day we crested a hill and saw Alauna. It was a coastal village and trading port that had once been protected by a Roman fort, but the Romans had gone and left the village defenseless against seaborne raiders. It appeared unravaged, however, and there were several decent-sized ships tied to the pier. Morholt became impatient as we neared the town and spurred his horse through the streets, almost cantering. We had no choice but to urge our own horses after him as he headed towards the shore. He dismounted at the edge of the pier and went to a ship that had a carving of a spread-winged swan upon her prow, and hailed the people on the deck in what was presumably Irish. They called back to him, and people I assumed to be the crew emerged from a hatch leading belowdecks. One of them was… odd-looking.

He had deeply tanned skin, which I suppose wouldn't be out of character for a sailor, and a single braid of long black hair that, combined with the epicanthic folds at the corners of his eyes, made him look very Mongolian. The man was staring at Tristan, who noticed and started staring back.

All of a sudden, Tristan called out to the man in a language that bore no resemblance to Latin or the Celtic tongues. The man replied in what sounded like the same language, then let out a bellow of laughter and leaped onto the dock. Tristan dismounted his horse and approached him. The two men hugged, which made my eyes widen in shock. Even Morholt looked askance.

"Lanval, what is going on?" the Irishman asked.

"I have found my brother!" the Mongolian-looking man, Lanval, said, pulling away from Tristan but keeping one arm around the scout's shoulders. He grinned. "Seven years ago I left the Wall, and I never thought to see any of my brothers again. But the gods are kind and have reunited us."

Morholt, for some reason, scowled.

"You are Sarmatian?" I asked.

"Yes, yes," Lanval said. "I am Lanval of the Lazyges, formerly of Sarmatia, now a sworn warrior of Lord Aengus mac Lorc of the Laigin tribe of Ireland. Tristan, is this woman your wife?"

The scout snorted and shook his head, and I wanted to melt into a puddle of embarrassment. But Lanval seemed eager to share his story and insisted on doing so over lunch in Alauna's single tavern: he had come to Hadrian's Wall with the other teenage (or even younger) Sarmatian boys, had been trained, had begun going on missions… and then had fallen in love. A young druidess orchestrating a (ultimately unsuccessful) resistance movement captured his heart, and Lanval deserted the Wall to follow her to her Irish homeland, where he had found employment. He was overjoyed to see Tristan again.

"I cannot wait for you to meet my Nimue," Lanval. I all but coughed my bread out of my mouth at the name. "She waits in Ireland with Lady Isolde, and will accompany us to Cornwall."

"Us?" Cynric asked.

Lanval cast the Saxon a glance. He had heard news of the Saxon invasion and its subsequent defeat, and seemed confused that a former enemy was now among the honored few chosen for such an important mission.

"My men and I," the former Knight clarified. "I lead a warband of twenty-six picked men who will be Lady Isolde's honor guard."

Cynric nodded, though whether he was pleased or displeased by the news was impossible to tell. I was happy: a warband of twenty-six men plus Lanval, Cynric, Tristan, and Morholt ensured that any roving gang of bandits would think twice about attacking us.

After lunch, the ship's crew loaded the horses onto the ship. This was an arduous task that involved blindfolding the animals and coaxing them up a wide, sturdy gangplank, then doing a haphazard alteration of the hatch leading belowdecks so that a shallow ramp large enough for a horse could be fitted. Also, all of the supplies stowed below had to be rearranged to accommodate the animals. We lost the rest of the afternoon and evening to this endeavor, and Morholt was practically frothing at the mouth with impatience. He wanted to just sell the horses and cast off, but Tristan and Lanval were adamantly against such a course of action. The horses we had brought from our starting point at Hadrian's Wall (even my nameless chestnut mare) were all specially bred from stock brought from Sarmatia, and were therefore irreplaceable—moreover, Tristan's mount was a trained warhorse, which only increased its value.

The next morning, however, we were ready to disembark. I remember it as a cloudless winter day, the sky overhead blue as could be and the wind cutting like a knife through all my layers. The Irish crew offered a prayer to the sea god Manannán, which sounded like the name of the Brittonic god Manawydan. Cynric muttered his own prayer to a god called Neorth. He seemed nervous as we pushed away from the pier and Alauna began to grow small with distance behind us.

"Winter is not a time for sailing," he told me. "The seas are rougher, and storms are harsher and more frequent."

I gestured up at the cloud-free sky. "I think we'll be fine."

The Saxon was unmoved. "For now," he said.

I decided I liked sailing—as a passenger. The salt-smelling breeze was invigorating, and the motion of the deck rolling underfoot was something I managed to adjust to rather quickly. I wouldn't have fared so well if I'd needed to clamber up the mast to furl and unfurl the sail, but such a thing was not among my required duties. I sat in an out-of-the way corner and wrote in my journal, listening to the cry of seabirds and the unintelligible Irish of the crew talking amongst themselves.

Tristan, however, was miserable. He looked queasy as soon as he set foot on the deck, and a few minutes after leaving Alauna he was hanging over the railing and vomiting. Morholt was snickering behind his back, apparently pleased at seeing the aloof scout brought low by something as minor as seasickness, but sobered as soon as Lanval snapped something to him in Irish. Both Lanval and Cynric seemed mildly sympathetic to Tristan, but both the Sarmatian and the Saxon were stoic fifth-century men who believed in just enduring suffering—which left me.

I cautiously approached Tristan, and rested a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.

The scout twisted his head just enough to glare at me, and I snatched my hand back.

"It… it helps to look at the horizon, or so I've heard," I said. Tristan made a pained noise, looked at the horizon for a moment, and then had to lower his head to resume emptying his stomach. I withdrew, trying to give him what little privacy there could be had while aboard a sailing ship.

We sailed for the rest of the day, and approached the Isle of Man in the afternoon. We docked in a small harbor town of Duboglassio, where the locals spoke a dialect of Irish that was nonsense to me and apparently close to nonsense to Lanval, Morholt, and the Irish crew. This was the midway-point in our sea journey; it would be one more day before we reached Ireland and Isolde. We took on food and fresh water, and shoveled out the waste that the horses had produced. Duboglassio was too small for an inn, so we slept on the ship. As a woman I was permitted the safety (and warmth) of sleeping belowdecks, and I was about to curl up in my cloak against the curved wall of the hull when Cynric tapped my foot with his boot.

The Saxon sat down next to me, so near that we were all but touching, and leaned his head close to mine. "Tell me of your vision," he murmured.

"It's not a vision," I grumbled, "It's just…" I wanted to tell him the truth, that I was from the future and knew such things only from scattered writings, but for some reason couldn't. "It's just something I know. Tristan and Isolde will fall in love, and I fear everything will come to ruin."

There was silence for a moment. There was no light belowdecks (a lantern would be too much of a fire hazard) except for the open hatchway, and Cynric was little more than a silhouette to my eyes. We weren't the only ones down here, and there was a small possibility we were overheard by members of the crew—but if so, we were speaking Latin, which only a few would have understood.

"Are you certain?" Cynric demanded.

"No," I replied. "I pray I'm wrong."

"If the Spinners have tied the thread of Tristan's life to that of Isolde, there is nothing we can do," the Saxon said with his usual fatalism. "We cannot see the tapestry Fate weaves for us, except in hindsight—and except for you."

"My foreknowledge does nothing but make me worry for the people I care about," I whispered into the dark. "It makes me feel powerless, not powerful."

There was another beat of silence, longer than the first.

"I never imagined a witch feeling powerless," Cynric murmured, so quiet that I could have almost imagined it. "Goodnight," he said, louder, then rolled over so there was space between us. He apparently went to sleep like that, and after either minutes or hours I followed suit.

The second day of sailing was one of clear skies and boredom. There was little to write about, for which I suppose I should be grateful, and we reached Ireland in one piece. "The town of the hurdled ford" was larger than Duboglassio, situated in a small natural harbor, and awaiting us at the end of the pier was a woman.

Imagine her: tall, slender as a willow branch, with hair blacker than raven feathers falling to her waist and wearing a long gown that was so white it blazed like a star under the morning sun. I couldn't see her face clearly from this distance, but I already knew it would be heart-breakingly beautiful.

Tristan, still pale from seasickness, approached the railing and rested his hands on it, gazing at the figure in white. Morholt came to stand next to him.

"Isolde," the Irishman said.

Tristan nodded, not looking away from the woman at the pier.

"Fuck," I muttered.

"Itouna" really is the Brittonic word for 'water.' It's also the Roman name for the River Eden, which flows through Cumbria into Solway Firth.

Luguwalion = Carlisle

Alauna = Maryport

The (simplified) concepts of galanas and sarhaed are Welsh legal terms that predate the final English conquest of Wales, and therefore might be indicative of what kind of legal system existed in sub-Roman Britain. However, Welsh law was only written down (across several different manuscripts with regional variations) more than 500 years after this story takes place, so nobody actually knows what British tribal laws were like. I'm working from the book Welsh Medieval Law by Arthur Wade-Evans, which is free to read online via the HathiTrust digital library. I WANT to read The Welsh Law of Women (2nd edition) by Morfydd Owen and Dafydd Jenkins, but all of the versions I've seen seem to be around 30 USD and I'm not sure I want to spend that much money on a fanfiction project. There are free-to-read excerpts available via Google Books, however, so I'm mining those for material for later chapters.

The Lay of Sir Launfal was written by Marie de France in the 12th century, and stars Sir Launfal (English spelling: Lanval), a poor but honorable knight in King Arthur's court. He becomes the secret lover of a fairy princess, and swears to remain loyal to her. Because of his promise to the fairy princess he spurns the advances of Guinevere, which enrages Guinevere to the point that she accuses him of dishonoring her. During Sir Launfal's trial, the fairy princess appears and whisks Sir Launfal away to Avalon, where he lives in happiness for the rest of his days. In this story the fairy princess = Nimue and Avalon = Ireland.

(Anglo-Saxon) Neorth = (Old Norse) Njord, the sea god

Duboglassio = Douglas ...According to Wikipedia, "Duboglassio" is from "Early Celtic", which is not a language. On the other hand, it's the only pre-Viking name for Douglas (or any town on the Isle of Man) I could find. Also, if this fic took place just a few decades later I could have written about Claire meeting St. Maughold and/or St. Patrick, but alas, this is not to be.

Spinners = the Norns of Nordic myth, who spun the threads of peoples' lives and cut them short at the appointed time. I couldn't find their Anglo-Saxon name.